On December 4, 2001, the State of Oklahoma executed 61-year-old Lois Nadean Smith by lethal injection, bringing an end to a case that had remained in the courts for nearly twenty years. Smith had been convicted of the 1982 murder of 21-year-old Cindy Baillee, the former girlfriend of her son, Greg Smith. The case became one of the most notorious female death penalty cases in Oklahoma history because of the brutality of the crime, the involvement of Smith’s own son, and the lengthy legal battle that followed.
According to prosecutors, the events began on July 4, 1982, when Lois Smith, her son Greg, and another woman picked up Cindy Baillee from a motel in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Investigators said Smith believed Baillee had threatened her son and had become convinced that the young woman posed a danger to him. During the drive, Smith confronted Baillee about those allegations. Prosecutors later argued that the confrontation escalated into a deliberate and deadly attack.
Court records showed that Baillee was assaulted before being taken to a residence in Gans, Oklahoma. Evidence presented at trial indicated that Smith stabbed Baillee and later shot her multiple times. Witness testimony and forensic evidence convinced prosecutors that the killing was intentional and exceptionally violent. Medical evidence revealed that Baillee suffered numerous gunshot wounds before her death.
One of the most damaging witnesses against Lois Smith was her own son. Greg Smith admitted that he was present during the killing and testified about what occurred. Prosecutors alleged that he assisted his mother during the attack by reloading the weapon. Greg was later convicted for his role in the crime and received a life sentence.
In 1983, a jury found Lois Smith guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced her to death. Over the next nineteen years, her attorneys filed numerous appeals in state and federal courts. They challenged various aspects of the conviction and sentence, arguing that errors had occurred during the trial and that the punishment should be overturned. Courts repeatedly rejected those arguments and upheld the death sentence.
As the execution date approached in late 2001, Smith remained the only woman on Oklahoma’s death row. Appeals to state courts, federal courts, and ultimately the United States Supreme Court failed to stop the execution. After all legal options had been exhausted, Oklahoma officials proceeded with the sentence.
On the evening of December 4, 2001, Smith was taken to the execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. Witnesses reported that she remained calm during her final moments. Before the lethal injection was administered, she addressed members of the victim’s family and expressed remorse for the pain she had caused. She asked for forgiveness and referenced her Christian faith in her final statement.
Smith was pronounced dead at 9:13 p.m., becoming the third woman executed in Oklahoma during 2001 and one of the few female inmates executed in the modern era of American capital punishment. Her execution also marked the end of one of Oklahoma’s longest-running death penalty cases.
More than four decades after Cindy Baillee’s murder, the case continues to be remembered because of its extraordinary circumstances, the role of family loyalty in motivating the crime, and the difficult questions it raised about revenge, justice, and capital punishment. While opinions about the death penalty remain divided, the facts of the case left little doubt about the jury’s conclusion: a young woman’s life had been taken in a deliberate act of violence, and the courts ultimately upheld the most severe punishment available under Oklahoma law.
